


kölle alaaf

by raumdeuter



Series: team spirit [7]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: 1. FC Köln, Alternate Universe - Rivers of London Fusion, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 15:49:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumdeuter/pseuds/raumdeuter
Summary: It happens quickly and it hardly hurts at all, like a lancet you were somehow expecting, and when it is over you are both more and less yourself than you have ever been.Lukas, Jonas, and the passing of a torch.





	kölle alaaf

When it happens you're in bed, half-asleep and tossing restlessly in the sheets. This time of year there's a stickiness to the air in Kobe that lingers long after the sun sets. That's how you know the dry chill that seeps suddenly into you can't be the weather.

It happens quickly and it hardly hurts at all, like a lancet you were somehow expecting, and when it is over you are both more and less yourself than you have ever been. Here there is something missing: the distant thunder of songs. The smell of the Rhine. A slapstick, a flail, and a mirror. Here there is something gained: the quiet understated thrum of your own heart.

You lie there in the darkness, unmoving, and count your breaths. You pick up the phone on the third ring.

"I felt it," he says, after a moment's hesitation. "As soon as I signed the contract."

You don't say anything. _Congratulations_ is too small a word for a responsibility so immense. So is _good luck_.

"Why me?" he says. "Why not Timo? He's been here longer, he's going to extend too, he told me. We were going to do it together. Why not the both of us?"

"It doesn't work like that," you say. "You don't get to choose. It chooses you."

It chooses you, and you don't get to decide how you give it up. You should have known better at the start. You should have known half a world away was too far away by half. It's only that you thought that home could be anywhere at all, anywhere you liked, and only now, much too late, do you recognize the fingerprints of the boy who never quite grew up in your plan.

He says, "I'm going to be honest, when I was a kid, I thought it was the goat."

It's not the first time someone's said that to you, but it drags a smile out of you anyway, and you can hear an answering huff on the other end of the line.

You don't say: _If it had been the goat and not me, maybe you'd still be in the Bundesliga_ , because the last thing either of you need right now is self-pity. You say: "I'll be honest, the goat helps a little."

You can tell he doesn't believe you. That's all right; he'll learn soon enough.

It's better this way. It's time.


End file.
